She said she knew we were safe with you, and always would be, because once, when she asked you to, you'd given up the thing you most wanted." Archer received this strange communication in silence. His eyes remained unseeingly fixed on the thronged sunlit square below the window. At length he said in a low voice: "She never asked me.
Edith WhartonHe knelt by the bed and bent over her, draining their last moment to its lees; and in the silence there passed between them the word which made all clear.
Edith Wharton